But that’s basketball, and the idea that a weird (but increasingly mainstream) virtual currency like Bitcoin could infiltrate the all-American game of football seemed impossible: until payment system Bitpay became the official sponsor of the St. Petersburg Bowl, formerly known as the Beef O’ Brady Bowl–but now known as the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl.

Okay, it’s not the most marquee event on the college football postseason calendar, but the Bitcoin Bowl does have a pretty stellar logo: a football, in an arching curve, emerges from a Bitcoin logo and flies through the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, toward you–the hapless NCAA football fan who is being unwittingly educated about the existence of virtual currencies while East Carolina or somebody thumps on Ball State. The college football audience and the people who used to gather at Mt.Gox to trade Bitcoins are not a group that seem at first blush to have a lot of overlap, but that’s part of the point here. These days, everybody has an interest in Bitcoin–even the people who like to eat at Beef O’Brady’s.DS